Queer Classics – 10 Novels Collection. Radclyffe Hall
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Название: Queer Classics – 10 Novels Collection
Автор: Radclyffe Hall
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 4064066499549
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All the while, as we sat in the crimson dimness of that luxurious room, — she eager, animated, flashing from thought to thought, talking as an old friend who has yearned for friendship and sympathy might talk to an old friend who has both to give, — all the while, as she held me bound by her witchery, her shadow in the distant mirror sat, a ghostly spy.
She was in the midst of a lively sketch of the society I was to know under her auspices, when all at once a blight came upon her spirits. She paused. Her color faded. Her eyes became flighty. Her smile changed to a look of pain. She shivered slightly. These were almost imperceptible tokens, felt rather than perceived.
Steps approached as I was regarding this transformation with a certain vague alarm, such as one feels at a doubtful sound, that may be a cry for help, by night in a forest. In a moment Densdeth entered the room. With him was a large man, of somewhat majestic figure, a marked contrast to the slender grace of Densdeth. This new-comer was following, not leading, as if not he, but Densdeth, were the master in the house.
Mr. Denman! As he came up the suite of parlors, I could observe him, form, mien, and manner.
Without any foreknowledge of him, I might have said, “An over-busy man, — a man over-weighted with social responsibilities. Too many banks choose him director. Too many companies want his administrative power. Too many charities must have him as trustee. One of the Caryatides of society. No wonder that he looks weary and his shoulders stoop. No wonder at his air of uneasy patience, or perhaps impatient endurance and eagerness to be free!”
But Churm had told me of other burdens this proud, self-confident man must bear. I could not be surprised that Mr. Denman looked old beyond his years, and that as he spoke his eyes wandered off, and stared vaguely into his own perplexities.
He received me cordially. His manner had a certain broken stateliness, as of a defeated sovereign, to whom his heart says, “Abdicate and die.” As he welcomed me to his house, he glanced at Densdeth. Did he fear a smile on that dark, cruel face, and a look which said, “O yes! you may keep up the pretence of lordship here a little longer, if you enjoy the lie!”
“You are an old friend, Mr. Byng. Robert, I am happy to see you again,” said Mr. Denman. “You must be at home with us. We dine at six. You will always find a plate. Come to-day, if you have no pleasanter engagement.”
Miss Denman’s look repeated the invitation.
I accepted. The old intimacy was renewed. And renewed with a distincter purpose on my part, because I said to myself, “ Who knows but I may, with my young force, aid this worn and weary man to shake off the burden that oppresses him, and frustrates or perverts his life, — be it the mere dead weight of an old error, — be it the lacerating grapple of a crime?”
* * * * *
And now the tale of my characters is complete. This drama, short and sad, marches, without much delay, to its close. If I have, in any scene thus far, dallied with details that may seem trivial, let me be pardoned! It may be that I have flinched, as I looked down the vista of my story, and discerned an ending of its path within some sombre cavern, like a place of sepulture. It may be that I have purposely halted to pluck the few pale flowers which grew along my road, and to listen a moment to the departing laugh, and the departing echoes of the laugh, of every merry comrade, as he went his way, and left me to fare as I might along my own.
A Morning with Cecil Dreeme
Through Churm’s active friendship, I at once found my place. I have mentioned my profession, chemistry. I was wanted in the world. Better business came to me than a professorship at the Terryhutte University, salary Muddefontaine bonds, or a post at the Nolachucky Polytechnic, salary Cumberland wild lands.
Churm only waited to establish me, and then was off, north, south, east, and west. It was one of those epochs when mankind is in a slough of despond, and must have a lift from Hercules. It was a time when society, that drowsy Diogenes, was beginning to bestir itself after a careless slumber, and, holding up the great lantern of public opinion to find honest men, suddenly revealed a mighty army of rogues. Rogues everywhere; scurvy rogues in mean places, showy rogues in high places; rogues cheating for cents in cheap shops, rogues defrauding for millions in splendid bank parlors; princely rogues, claiming princely salaries for unprofitable services, and puny rogues, corrupted by such example, stealing the last profits to eke out their puny pay and give them their base pleasures; potent rogues, buttoning up a million’s worth of steamships or locomotives in their fob, and rogues, as potent for ill on a smaller scale, keeping back the widow’s mite, and storing the orphan’s portion with the usurer. Rogues everywhere! and the great, stern, steady eye of public opinion, at last fully open and detecting each rogue in the place he had crept or strode into, marking him there in his dastard shame or haughty bravado, and branding him THIEF, so that all mankind could know him.
In this crisis, Society’s great eye of Public Opinion turned itself upon Churm, and demanded him as The Honest Man. Society’s unanimous voice called upon him to put his shoulder to the wheel. Society said, “Be Dictator! dethrone, abolish, raze, redeem, restore, construct! Condemn; forgive! Do what you please, — only oust Roguery and instate Honesty.”
This gigantic task engaged Churm totally. I lost him from my daily life.
It was a busy, practical life, — the life of one who had his way to work; and yet not without strange and unlooked-for excitements, in the region of romance.
My comrades in Europe, countrymen and foreigners, had condoled with me on my departure for home.
“Going back to America!” said they, “to that matter-of-fact country, where everything is in the newspapers.”
“You that have lived in Italy!” deplored my romantic friends, — “in Italy, where skeletons in closets are packed scores deep; where you can scarcely step without treading on a murder-stain; where if a man but sigh in his bedchamber, when he loosens his waistcoat, the old slumbering sighs, which chronicle old wrongs done in that palace, awake and will not sleep until they have whispered to each other and to the affrighted stranger their tale of a misery; where the antique dagger you use for a paper-cutter has rust-marks that any chemist will say mean maiden’s blood; where the old chalice you buy at a bargain gives a mild flavor of poison to your wine; you that have lived in richly historied Italy, where the magnificent past overshadows the present, what will you find to interest you in a country where there is no past, no yesterday, and if no yesterday, no to-day worth having, — but life one indefinitely adjourned to-morrow?”
“Poor Byng! Romantic fellow! Why, unless there should be a raid of Camanches or Pawnees from the Ohio country,” said my European friends, with a refreshing ignorance of geography, — “unless there should come a stampede of the red-skinned gentry to snatch a scalp or a squaw in the Broadway of New York, you will positively pine away for lack of adventures.”
“What a bore to dwell in a land where there are no sbirri to whisk you off to black dungeons! How tame! a life where no tyrannies exist to whisper against always, to growl at on anniversaries, to scream at when they pounce on you, to roar at when you pounce on them. Yes, what stupid business, existence in a city where nobody has more and nobody less than fifteen hundred dollars a year, paid quarterly in advance; where СКАЧАТЬ